Kyiv said on Monday that its forces had recaptured the village of Petikhatki en route to one of the most heavily defended areas in the country’s Russian-occupied south, and that they had recaptured 113 square kilometers of land in the past two weeks, Reuters reports.

Ukrainian military personnel raised yellow and blue national flags in a video posted on social media where they said they were in the village, the eighth village in the country’s southeast, which Kyiv said it had liberated.

“Today, June 18, the forces of the 128th Airborne Assault Brigade knocked out the Russians from the village of Petikhatki. The Russians fled, leaving equipment and ammunition behind. Glory to Ukraine!” – declared the Ukrainian military.

Reuters said it could not immediately verify where the video was shot.

Moscow’s representative in the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region said on Sunday that Kyiv forces recaptured the village, but were later pushed out of the village, and the settlement is now in a “gray” zone of control.

Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine Hanna Malyar reported that two weeks after the start of the counteroffensive, Kyiv troops not only recaptured Petikhatki, but also advanced seven kilometers deep into Russian borders.

“During two weeks of offensive actions in the direction of Berdyansk and Melitopol, eight settlements were liberated,” Malyar wrote on the Telegram channel.

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